So I am playing in a home game and I was wanting to get some advice for cross classing in as a Kitsune Ninja/Kineticist. It is a 5th level Character Ninja 2/3 Pyrokineticists. The idea is that I will level mostly as a ninja end goal somewhere like Ninja 13/PyroKinetcist 7 or Ninja 12/PyroKinetcist 8. We are doing a 25 point buy system. My stats are
Str: 13 -2 11
Dex: 15 +2 4th: +1 18
Con: 16 16
Int: 10 10
Wis: 10 10
Cha: 14 +2 16
I just had a few questions about this. First can I sneak attack with Kinetic Blast? Was combat as started can I flank with Kinetic blast if someone was on the other side if I was 10 feet away? Am I stretching my points way too thin? I plan on buying a belt of dex or con I am not sure which to buy. My main source of attack would be with kinetic blast but I still want to be able to do my ninja tricks. Just advice for building the stats or playing the character or if you think this idea is just bad let me know. Please and thank you
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Kinetic blast makes an attack roll, so you can sneak attack with.
Only melee attacks get flanking, so you need kinetic blade or kinetic whip to get flanking with kinetic blast. Otherwise, you're limited to sneak-blasting creatures that are flatfooted or otherwise losing their dex bonus.
I'm curious which ninja tricks you're interested in. The unchained rogue tends to outclass it otherwise.
Generally it's a bad idea to multiclass kineticist if you intend to use their blast offensively. However, there's actually a 3pp archetype for unchained ninja you may want to look into, Hoka-han, which utilizes fire blast and basic pyrokinesis. I'd go for Dex over Con here. Also, you should be able to apply sneak attack damage to your fire blast unless you're applying extended range to it, since it's got a range of 30 and is considered a ranged touch attack (although you can always take deadly range to extend how far you can sneak attack from, which is great if you intend to stack stealth and use sniping tactics).
Well I was gonna start with Fast stealth to begin with Maybe get the feather fall trick, Definitely get the vanishing trick and get the shadow clone trick. Maybe the smoke bomb and blood debt tricks and probably the pressure point. as for master tricks I was going for Kawariwi, ghost step, unbound steps, or assassinate my main weapon will be a wakizashi if need be. I plan on using most of my feats for the kitsune magical tail. My GM allows the third party Unchained ninja for this as well.
That archetype seems interesting. Based on that second level ability Pyrokinetic Ki, if I took 1 level in kineticist that from that point if i took only ninja levels my fire blast would scale as if I was a pyrokineticists? And this Idea I have isn't necasserily the best idea just a creative idea I wanted to do but i wanted to make it work and not be something that just mechanically not work.
I am not interested in the doing the most possible damage just want to work and be happy haha.
Be decent mostly haha
Doubtful that ninja is very...'good' for this. Or kineticist for a ninja build. Bad combo either way.
They work off of entirely different principles- Kineticist is one big blast, while ninja relies on many small hits to wrack up sneak attack damage. With only the 1 attack...you are trading 1d6 (or 1d6+1) for a very situational 1d6 at the same scale rate (and this math gets even worse when you include composites with 2d6 or 2d6+2)
Even with the blade, you only have the one weapon, which is suboptimal for a ninja. Elemental annhilator might work...but that trade away a lot of kineticist (you only really get options starting level 7...and then maybe 11- both bad depending on how the multiclass goes)
It is only usually worth it if you can get sneak attack on an AoE (cause then you get multiple attacks). Unfortunately, that is a mechanic reserved for arcane tricksters...and kinetcists can't qualify for that (ignoring the fact that they use SLAs and lack proper spells, they are also psychic based, and...well...'arcane' trickster).
It wouldn't, I'm pretty sure. The rules hoka-han applies to fire blast would override the normal rules, since specific trumps general. If you still took kineticist levels, however, they would stack with your ninja levels for this, though (so if you were a 4th level hoka-han and 5th level kineticist, your basic pyrokinesis would be treated as if you were a 9th level kineticist, and if you enhanced your fire blast with ki, it'd be treated as coming from a 9th level kineticist). You could multiclass if there's lower-level utility wild talents you're interested in, such as flame jet, searing flame, or smoke storm, but beyond those I see little point.
There are a few problems with this concept. Firstly, any sort of multiclassing outside of kineticist causes the blast to lag behind in damage. Then gather power becomes an unusable skill whenever you are trying to get your stealth hits in because it is a loud and obvious display of power. Lastly, ranged attacks are always problematic when you are trying to get sneak attack damage with them.
I'm not saying don't do it, but just be aware of these major hurdles you'll have to overcome if you want to be effective with your character concept.
Kitsune Ninja Kineticist is actually a combo I talked about when I did a thing on multiclassing with Kineticists. You can do more DPR if you focus on what Kitsune are best at, Scout's Charge Sneak Attack. However, you only really need 4 levels of Ninja for that combo. After that, well, you are paying far too much on the Kineticist side to keep it viable. It's only really rough math and by spending a Ki point when full attacking you stay ahead on damage. You really have to be using your kinetic blast for melee and getting Sneak Attack reliably. Otherwise, kinetic blast falls behind on damage because you are loosing out on all the side benefits to damage such as Elemental Overflow.
In short, Kineticist dipping is best done very little. Scout Kitsune Ninja, especially with the feat for +1 sneak attack, can get an edge in DPR without loosing much. But, the more you dedicate to Ninja past Scout's Charge the more you will loose.
EDIT: Actually, checking my old math the additional (very inaccurate) attack from the Kitsune bite does potentially bring more levels of Ninja into viability. I just wouldn't trust it much. One thing to consider is that you should be almost always using Delayed Blast which is a great feat for stealth characters and meh for everyone else.
The Kineticist class is one that has very little synergy with anything that aren't its own class features. To do cool things with the class, you are fighting a war against burn and the only things that reliably mitigate burn are your own class features. Gather power, as has been pointed out, is particularly and spectacularly unstealthy.
If you want to multiclass with a kineticist, you should probably get what you need from the second class and then focus on the kineticist. Most dips are for feats though, and the kineticist really doesn't need those. There's no VMC Ninja option, is there? Maybe ask your GM about creating one?
VMC? What is this This Scout Ninja Charge thing? Is it only for Kitsune? Why are they better at this?
VMC? What is this This Scout Ninja Charge thing?
Ninjas can take some Rogue archetypes. In particular Scout is fantastic for Kitsune because they get sneak attack on a charge and can full attack on a charge getting in the Ki extra attack from full attacking.
VMC?
VMC is "Variant Multiclassing". It's from Pathfinder Unchained. The basic idea is that you you give up half of your natural feats (3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th) for some features from another class, but you still get to keep taking levels in your basic class. So a Druid, for example, could take a Variant Multiclass of Magus and eventually get Magus Arcana and Spellstrike, but they wouldn't hurt the advancement of their druid spells, animal companion, wildshape, etc.
The rogue VMC in particular gets trapfinding at level 3, sneak attack at level 7, Evasion at level 11 and Uncanny Dodge at level 15. Since the Ninja is an alternate class for the rogue, you could do something similar to that and just take all your levels in Kineticist.
You can read the rules for it on the SRD here. There aren't currently rules for VMCing with a lot of classes, but if you worked with your GM you could probably come up with something analogous to the one for the rogue.
All right thanks. It was a theme Idea I would probably go more Kineticist than ninja now though. I am not looking so much for optimization just as long as it can work haha
That sounds like a great idea thanks!